Patchwork Road
by Virodeil
Summary: Through interconnected drabbles and dribbles with prompts from 100 words randomly generated, sprinkled with some crossovers: a journey of discovery, understanding, acceptance and, maybe, healing and reconcilliation, between members of a team that should have been a ticking timebomb. *(AU after Avengers 1.)
1. Gaunt

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

**Through interconnected drabbles and dribbles with prompts from 100 words randomly generated, sprinkled with some crossovers: a journey of discovery, understanding, acceptance and, maybe, healing and reconcilliation, between members of a team that should have been a ticking timebomb.**

Story Tags: Alternate Universe - Avengers (Marvel Movies), Character Study, Character Introspection, Character development

Chapter summary: Steve does the unplanned and unthinkable, and finds out.

1\. Gaunt

The slap echoes hollowly in the destroyed penthouse.

Loki doesn't flinch. Steve the slapper does.

There is something _wrong_ when hand met cheek. Visual appraisal doesn't match tactile information.

The cheek – Loki's cheek – is _sunken_.


	2. Ordeal

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Steve tries to find out _more_ from what has apparently been _less_.

2\. Ordeal

"Tell… Tell _us_ what happened with you. What happened after you fell from that rainbow bridge Thor talked about," Steve demands. His eyes burn with anger – but for a different person, now, an _unknown_ person, one who could make that frightened look briefly appear on that self-claimed god like nothing _and nobody_ else could, here on earth – or even on Asgard for that matter, if Loki's reaction to Thor is to be believed.

The Avengers have targeted _the wrong person_.


	3. Fever

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Even someone as resourceful as Loki is could fall.

3\. Fever

Odin sent forth a set of magic-supprescent shackles, including a mouthguard, with his ravens.

Thor reluctantly applies them on his brother.

It marks the last time the said brother is more or less healthy.

Deep in the bowels of the helicarrier, in a similar glass cage to the one the self-proclaimed god was once imprisoned, battered and bony frame, no longer concealed in illusions, is racked with silent shivers.

And then the delirious mumbles begin….


	4. Dual

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Having two sets of family doesn't mean having a family. Tony understands that well.

4\. Dual

"You said… he's adopted?" Tony asks tentatively, as his unreadable eyes are glued to the CCTV footage of Loki's cage.

On Thor's affirmation, he asks in a quieter voice, "His real family, are they still alive?"

One denial later, the inventor curses softly. "Two families, eh? Ha, but he still has _nobody_. Never imagined I'd call him a poor sod after all this."

And, in a yet-softer tone barely audible even to his own ears, he mutters, "Same like me, huh? Everything and _nothing_."


	5. Terrific

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Steve is pretty good at this, when needed.

Chapter tags: Big Brother Cyndrome SHIELD, Team Bonding

5\. Terrific

Natasha has been sent ahead to infiltrate her own workplace. Tony and JARVIS are monitoring every CCTV and hacking through every automatic door on the way. Bruce is keeping Clint distracted with formulae for various arrowheads. Meanwhile, Steve will be the battering ram and the pack mule for the end job.

After all, Doctor Erskin told him to be a good _man_, not a good _soldier_. Disobeying command for the right reason isn't a new thing for him.

He is _very, very good_ in this, in fact.


	6. Fix

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: It's the second time _ever_ that the Avengers are unanimous in their opinion of something, and the topic is just as grim as the first instance was.

6\. Fix

Seen much closer, Loki's condition is _much worse_ than the best hidden camera could ever describe.

He is barely lucid, even when Bruce takes blood samples from him before attaching various machines and drops to his person. All the gashes and breakages _visible_ on his all-too-pale skin, painted colourfully with bruises and maybe other things, even makes Clint lose some of the edge of fury in his every action – silent, never speaking, after he's found out what he's been kept away from all this time.

The team Nick Fury cobbled together at a last minute is for once unanimous in their decision: Enemy or not, Loki's condition _cannot_ be left this way.

Especially when Bruce _and Tony the ex-Ten-Ring prisoner_ find some things on the battered body that are too new, that signify something _very, very foul_ happening in SHIELD's own ranks.


	7. Convict

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Tony doesn't need any formal education in law to defend one who cannot defend himself. Even when the defendee has recently participated in an extraterrestrial armed invasion that wrecked New York.

7\. Convict

"All right, Director, did you perform some medical check up on him _after_ he'd been slapped into those restrains? And I don't mean medical _experiment_, y'know."

…

"Well, we've got _laws_, don't we?"

…

"Oh I know he's not an American. But he's on American soil, and everything he or his army destroyed belongeds to the old US of A. So?"

…

"Well, _sir_, even the worst serial killer has the right to at least some basic medical care _before_, _during_ and _after_ a _verdict_ has been passed down, and they deserve _not to be experimented on_. What makes this different? Lokes hasn't even been passed through the court yet, sham judgement or not. And don't give me that _shit_ about him being extraterrestrial or something, kay-kay?"

Tony chirps to the furious bellow heard _clearly_ through the phone's speaker, _each time_. His eyes, though, seen by the guests in his ruined tower only, speaks a _very_ different tone.


	8. Castle

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: The second face-to-face encounter between Tony and Loki goes a lot differently, compared to its predecessor.

8\. Castle

The bleary green eyes open slowly, blink in incomprehension, then widen in alarm.

Tony grins down at the man laid out on the hospital bed on the twenty-sixth floor, surrounded by various medical apparatus.

"Hi hi Lokes," he chirps. "How're you? Still feels like being put through the grinder? Need anything? World domination isn't on the menu, though. You're in my _home_, by the way; please don't ruin it _further_. We need this place _standing_ and _functional_ to hide in, after all. S'not a castle, certainly, but good enough for a kip, eh?"


	9. Calculation

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Steve is belabouring under a wrong calculation. Tony fixes it.

9\. Calculation

"Mister Stark, we can't possibly depend on your generocity forever," Steve begins. "SHIELD may be mad with us, and for a good reason; but maybe, if I clear the problem to Director Fury, we can come out at last? We've been leeching offof you for _three months_, while you're _also_ rebuilding the tower. It must've cost a pretty penny, regardless of however rich you are. It's… _wrong_. We need to pull our weights, too. It's not safe, either, to put all the eggs in one basket, so to say."

In answer, silently for once, Tony prints out sheets of weekly revenue and net profit from his conglomerate, and also those of their total expenses for the same span of time.

Steve shuts up.


	10. Flirt

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Women or men, terran or extraterrestrial, friend or former enemy, Tony really doesn't differentiate in everything, including – or maybe, _especially_ – in his specialty.

10\. Flirt

"Been teasing Capcicle, haven't you?" Tony, grinning madly, puts an arm round a boneless – although thankfully _not_ literally boneless – Loki draped on the couch of their common floor. "Now I know _for sure_ that you're recovering well, indeed. Take care you're not sent back to the medical floor, though. _Unless_ you love that place _that_ much, huh? Oh, and Pepper's out of the option!"


	11. Lump

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Tony highly appreciates beautiful everything, including beautiful sleep. Sadly, Loki is not of the same mind.

11\. Lump

"_Lokiiiiii!_" Tony whines from under his hill of blankets, while trying to save the said blankets from a pair of cruel, grabby hands. "I'm _resting_. I never bothered you when you're in bed, you know! Now _let me be_."

The mission to sabotage the STRIKE teams that keep trying to retrieve Loki – and _capture_ the Avengers purportedly to be questioned – that he undertook qquite recently was done under a relentless barrage of sleet _in the middle of a _**_harsh_**_ winter_. So now Tony _really, really_ appreciates a good _warm_ bed under a mountain of _warm_ blankets.

And _somebody_ is thankless enough to _disturb_ him in his precious haven.


	12. Apple

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Eve and Adam in the Garden, reenacted for certain.  
**Or**  
The temptation of an apple.

12\. Apple

"What's this?"

Bruce is interested in the golden-hued apple-like fruit that Loki's silently proffering him.

A shruggy facial expression of a lifted eyebrow answers him, followed by a curious – in both senses of the word – mixture between question and explanation:

"Do you have a spouse, intended, or close relative or friend to share this with? One that you cannot part with or live without? Preferably such close person that does not have anywhere else to go, anyone else to miss.

"This will make you healthy for a long, long time, although I doubt you can get rid of the green beast using this. One bite is already good enough to make you full, and it can stay fresh for long periods of time even after that, as long as you wrap it well in the leaves I shall provide you.

"So, you can share it with whoever that person is – or maybe more than one person – within this year or the next. Do not bother to share it with those who are already here, however. I am going to give them one each, after this."


	13. Baby

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: An adoptee now adopts. Not so shocking. But when the adoptee is a certain someone….

13\. Baby

"Loki… whose children are those?!" Pepper squawks.

The addressee himself is parked casually on the couch that's by now is informally designated as "Loki's seat" on the common floor. _And_ a wicker basket containing a pair of sleeping _human_ infants is indeed nestled in his lap.

_But_, in answer to her, he just _raises an eyebrow_.


	14. Acute

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Not every history that repeats itself is a bad thing.

14\. Acute

"Loki… this situation, _your_ situation, it's not condusive _at all_ for raising a child, let alone _children_. Do you even know how to raise _babies_? You've got servants to take care of things at home, don't you?"

Steve and Pepper tag-team the self-proclaimed god… who hasn't talked about being a god or about being a king of the whole earth for this past year.

The answer they receive is simple and, in a way, quite to the point that it shuts them up like they'd just been treated to a solid sucker punch to the gut:

"I was adopted during a war."


	15. Lush

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Author's notes: I hope that we all safe and the pandemic quickly dies down. Keep safe, folks. And if you've got spare good thoughts and prayers for me, regardless of your religion or if you have a religion to follow at all, please send them forth for me? It's unnerving, to suffer from my reoccurring stomach ulcer and a flu when the sympthoms, combined like this, are rather similar to the source of this pandemic… - Rey

Chapter summary: Denying one's race and nature only goes so far when comfort and safety are in the line, sometimes.

15\. Lush

The forest is a green patch in the snow-covered landscape.

"You sure you'd like to live _here_? With those _babies_?" Pepper is highly sceptical and concerned, looking between the verdant foliage and the man standing nearby, holding a – thankfully well-covered – wicker basket containing two sleeping babies. "This place is cold for most of the year, you know, and it's pretty far from even the nearest civilisation."

But, as if emphasising a point she should have caught on, the green-eyed new father just nods _again_ at the expanse of evergreen.

Well, she must admit, the place _at least_ looks pretty and alive.


	16. Bleeding

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Loki doesn't mean it, but chaos happens anyway.

16\. Bleeding

A lucky STRIKE team, by virtue of catching Loki while he happens to be alone with his adoptive children in the Central Park, manages to put a few bullets on different parts of his body.

It's thankfully _not_ fatal or incapacitating for the Jötun Asgardian.

_But_ still, those wounds bathe him in red….

And he chooses to crash in front of Pepper just outside of the elevator on the common floor of Tony's tower.

Well, home sweet home… maybe….


	17. Hemlock

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Revenge comes in many different ways. Revenge messages, likewise. And Loki is plenty creative to execute a unique one.

17\. Hemlock

Tony has the gall to _forbid_ Loki from returning to his forest home, or even going _anywhere_ alone outside of the private spaces on the tower.

Remembering the near misses his tiny, helpless charges suffered during the fray with the STRIKE team, Loki acquiesces, _very, very_ grudgingly. To fill his abundant free time, he chooses to grow plants… of just one kind… that is usually used to honour _dead people_ in funeral rights somewhere on Midgard…

"Oh, my, clever, Lokes. You wanna send those leaves to the STRIKE team?" How gleeful Tony is….


	18. Limp

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Clint follows Loki's bloody footsteps, _literally_.

18\. Limp

Clint comes home to the tower severely bleeding, _as well_.

By now Pepper is _quite_ tempted to put a sign saying "Blood is not allowed on the carpet" over the main doors of Stark Tower, now tentatively renamed Avengers Tower. The severity of clint's leg wound buries her annoyed snarkiness deep, though.

The best medical equipment Tony has judges that Clint will lose the leg, or at least the muscles on his bullet-bredded calf, and Tony's jack-of-all-trades physician nails the coffin shut; though, thankfully, just _figuratively_.


	19. Conflict

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: When desire wars with necessity, an undecided Clint is the casualty.

19\. Conflict

"I could heal your leg, if you would let me."

The offer – _Loki's_ offer – rings in Clint's ears, haunting his every waking, lucid second.

What does that _puppet master_ – or is that puppet _mock_ master? – want as _payment_? Is there any nefarious, probably long-term hidden goal that twisted _thing_ wishes to achieve by doing this?

But otherwise, could Clint _himself_ live and work and all with a lame leg? What would he do if his enemies came a-calling? He managed to escape _this time_ only by sheer luck and desperation!


	20. Freeze

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: An epic showdown with a rival super sniper is interrupted and ended so summarily by a third party. What a wound to one's pride! Worse to Clint, it's _Loki_ who does that.

20\. Freeze

Clint's would-be assassin has been found out, _and caught_. And, true to his quality as a top-mark sniper, his assigned murderer – or maimer? – is yet another top-mark sniper, by the code-name of Winter Soldier.

He is pleased – and, secretly, _relieved_ – that at least one of his enemies is down. He is _much_ less than pleased, however, to find out that _Loki_ is the one who has downed the opposite assassin sniper, by literally freezing the said assassin solid. _From afar_ no less, which is usually _Clint's_ type of warfare; without the literal freezing part, of course.


	21. Luxurious

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Sometimes, one needs an alone time, in whatever way possible. Tony is not an exception to that.  
But not in the way most people would think. Oh, definitely not.

21\. Luxurious

Clint is not speaking with Natasha, because Natasha _begged_ Loki to heal him.

Steve is not speaking with Pepper, because she advocated for the by-now-unfrozen Winter Soldier to be remanded to the authorities, while the blank-eyed assassin turned out to be _Bucky Barnes_, his life-long and best friend.

Loki is not speaking with Thor, who is newly back from Asgard and trying _so hard_ to apologise to him for blindly adhering to SHIELD's demand to leave him in their custody earlier.

Bruce is hiding from all the tensions by locking himself in his lab, with his newly retrieved sweetheart Betty Ross.

Erik and Jane are sequestered in their own lab for the same reason, and so is their assistant Darcy….

Well, what an awesome coincidence! Now Tony can snoop and spy on SHIELD-that-may-not-be-entirely-SHIELD to his heart's content, aided just by his faithful AI companion and best buddy and butler and advisor JARVIS. No Clint and Natasha to critique him about his snoopy activities, no Pepper and Steve and Brucey to nag him to rest, no Loki and his kiddies to torment him, no booming-voiced Thor to distract him, and no trio of alien-dude-detector scientists – and assistant scientist – either to divert his attention from his new job! It's a very, very, very good gift that they've inadvertently given him, it's certainly rare and grand, and Tony would like to bask in it.


	22. Cosmetic

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Tony uncovers something very, very shocking.

22\. Cosmetic

Natasha said the Winter Soldier helped _train_ her. All those years ago. _Before_ she joined SHIELD. And then _SHIELD_ used the Winter Soldier to _incapacitate Clint_?!

It smells fishy to her. It smells fishy to Tony, too.

And now, Tony unearths a very, very fishy titbit deep in SHIELD's files. It refers – in however vague a term – to _Zola_, HYDRA's _leading_ scientist, being _employed_ by SHIELD after his capture all those decades ago.

The Avengers wonder: What differs SHIELD from HYDRA, then? The world doesn't need a pretty face to mask some rotting core in its protectors!


	23. Mother

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Darcy did her homework, she did! It's unfortunate for Loki, though.

23\. Mother

"Hey, Lokes, Thor told me about youuu," Darcy chirps as she skips into the kitchen area on Loki's floor. She stops by the mobile cradle that holds the cooing twins, set on the wide, sturdy kitchen counter, and reaches in a hand to play with them.

Continuing whimsically with her tangent, she says, "You know what? Legends never said you're abandoned. Erik told me many things, after Thor almost literally fell down on us, and he said nothing about any kind of adoption, s'ept for some blood-brother kind of thing, and I checked it all, too, in all the legend books and websites. You ever met your mom and dad on the other side and asked them why they threw you out? I think Thor said something about confronting some blue giants… Mom's Laufey and Dad's Farbauti, if I remember it right… right? So, how were they?"

And, on his way to get out a full pan from the oven, Loki freezes, _before fainting_.

He has _killed_ one who could have been _Frigga_ to him in another life.


	24. Cannon

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Steve Rogers was a _soldier_ in a _war_, more than half a century ago. And now he is reminding the world that the arm-wieldin skills he got from that time have not frozen off of him in the intervening years.

24\. Cannon

"Erm, Cap? That's quite a big launcher you've got there. I don't think we've got a good enough training hall in the tower for that," Clint ventures out, eyes wide, fixed on the humongous thing perched on Steve's shoulder.

A thin, mirthless smile answers the flabbergasted inquiry, but Steve is otherwise silent, as he has been ever since he found out about his best friend – his _brother_ in everything except by blood – being weaponised in all senses of the word and, later, about HYDRA's involvement in SHIELD.

He needn't explain himself, all the same. The next person or team who tries to take Bucky away from him now knows what he is prepared to do.


	25. Ray

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Score 1 for magic, but score 1 for tech, _too_.

25\. Ray

Bruce and Betty, in joint research with Erik and Jane, also with long-distance, discreet advice from Henry "Hank" Pym – the particle-matter expert who has been in SHIELD's scopes longer than the Avengers have except probably for Tony – and, wonder of all wonders, Loki the mischievous but oh-so-intelligent-and-insightful recluse, have discovered a new type of "light" that is both useful and surprisingly safe on its own. The light costs energy; but with Tony and his arc reactors there, none of the researchers is worried about that one downside.

This particular beam is not made for destroying cities, nor for building supersoldiers, nor for imaging hidden things, and neither for cutting fine lines in things and people. No, its use is more mundane, more dangerous, and more bizarre than those, all at once.

Because, something that amuses Loki the git to no end, this particular thing, which shines in different colours when exposed to different objects in different conditions, serves to find cracks in what people call "reality" and guide the user through the otherwise unseen and unsensed passageways… for one that is _not_ a mage, that is, as Loki smugly informs the rest of them.


	26. Glossy

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Enter Peter Parker: kiddy, bubbly genius.

26\. Glossy

Tony encounters an intriguing squirt while strolling down Queens for a coffee shop, disguised as a man newly arrived in the Big Apple and now lost in one of his adventures.

The sprog, named Peter Parker, is a bright, chirpy orphan who lives with a couple of poor, childless relatives since six years ago. He is intelligent enough to merit a college scholarship, if only he were eight or nine years older.

Tony can't directly sponsor him, sadly, nor can he take an active role in the kid's education and perhaps even upbringing, with situations being this way, but that doesn't mean Peter is a lost course. Tony is never prepared to lose, especially to lose good gems like this! The boy will grow well, and get polished in the best highschool possible, and _then_ they can talk again.

In the meantime, a heap of dollars and a pouch of gold bars should suffice to pave the way, _plus_ a reliable method for the family to get away should undesirables sniff Tony's connection to them. Tony will have his little gem for either Stark International or the Avengers _or both_ all shiny in a decade more!


	27. Penguin

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Darcy gives Loki's children a fitting tribute.

27\. Penguin

"What is _that_ thing, Miss Lewis?"

Loki is ever wary of Darcy after that nonchalant speculation about his birth parentage that accursed afternoon that long time ago. And now he looks down, surprised and interested and confused all at once, staring at the small, stuffed… something… thrust to under his nose, still attached to the young woman's hand.

"It's fitting for you folks, trust me! It's for your kids! Though you're welcome to borrow it from time to time," is all that he gets out of her.

So he researches….

And damn her, that odd amphibian-looking bird turns out to be one that thrives _in cold places_.

Not for the first time, he wishes he could hate her.


	28. Excessive

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Darcy doesn't relish telling Thor off, for good reason.

28\. Excessive

Thor is more often than not larger than life, it seems to darcy, even when he was supposedly "mortal," last year. Eat _lots_, talk _loud_, blaze _hard_ into people's lives….

His abundantly loud, jovial presence has begun to tax everyone in the tower, sadly; even Jane can see that, when she isn't busy mooning over _him_ or in the lab or thinking about that damn lab. With how pressurised the Avengers and co are from outside, Darcy thinks it a wise decision to at least _try_ to keep the pieces inside from fracturing further than they already are, by confronting him about this humongous issue.

If only it's not so daunting a task, even for her daring self, with him in full power like this and her _knowing_ about it….


	29. Ambitious

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Jane is not only a scientist at hart, but also an explorer.

29\. Ambitious

"Let's try this!" Jane waves the bulky rod that can generate the Pathfinder ray – the research team's new invention – all about like a conductor's baton, grinning excitedly all the while.

Her colleagues and their loved ones – her _friends_ by now, as unbelievable as it is: _**friends**_ – look at her with various degrees of amusement, as they're ensconced in their own favourite seats in the common room on their common floor. She _doesn't care_, though.

"Any suggestion where to go? We already tested where to find a passageway! I suppose we need to somehow make a devise that detects where we'll end up, but… well… it'll be just nice to visit other worlds!"


	30. Hopscotch

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Revenge is best served where it counts.

30\. Hopscotch

"_Lokiiiiii_!" Darcy whines desperately as, with every random tile that she steps on, a different alteration comes upon her body _and voice_.

Skipping about when she's playing a game is good and even exciting. But she's trying to get to the bathroom for a business meeting with nature, here! Skipping over the faintly marked tiles when in such pressing need is _horrible_!

"I was only trying to help you, you know! I wanna know what it's like there myself, _too_. It's not all about you!"

If only she knew what woe suggesting that they go to Jötunheim would bring _her_–!


	31. Hell

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: It is a prison of the mind, Tony thinks.

31\. Hell

Jötunheim is a broken, barren, icy, dead wasteland populated with hostile, barbaric, ugly giants with icy blue skin and heartless red eyes, Loki insists. Æsir shiver with deep chill there. Mortals will certainly perish within moments, in comparison.

But Tony just raises an eyebrow to all that explanation.

"Certainly sounds horrible," he remarks mildly when the Jötun Asgardian is finished; then, grinning wolfishly, he counters, "Did you get ambushed and tortured there for your services? Did they threaten an innocent trapped together with you so you'd comply? Did they say they'd kill everyone related to you with any good degree of closeness _anyway_ if your under-pressure creation failed to work as they wanted? Did they raze a village _in their own territory of operation_ just to make a point? Did they bomb _occupied homes_ just for _target practise_?"

If Jötunheim is as bad as that patch of desert in Afghanistan, he'll agree not to go. But he doubts it.

Loki's visage is manic when spewing out that declaration, not _haunted_.


	32. Murky

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Loki and Bruce aren't all that different, Betty thinks.

32\. Murky

The problem of going – or at least trying to go – to Jötunheim is not with the weather, and not so much with the people, Betty decides; after all, humans have long been able to survive in very, very cold and harsh climates, such as the Antarctica and a few Arctic cities and settlements. Humans are also generally adaptable and mild and peaceable – at least most of them, compared to people such as Thor and Loki.

No, the problem doesn't lie with either of those, she _knows_, because she can detect eerie similarities between Loki and Bruce.

Dear Bruce. Who _abhors_ his own self in the form of Hulk. Who ever seeks to _destroy_ that part of his makeup. Who cringes away whenever Hulk is mentioned or even _praised_. Who broke up with her all those years ago because he _one-sidedly_ decided that she should not marry a monster such as he.

The problem isn't a clear-cut thing, unlike most of everyone thinks, although Bruce is beginning to realise it… and get sickly – not Hulky – green in the process.


	33. Fold

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Betty strikes true. Loki caves in.

33\. Fold

For such a graceful, eloquent creature, Loki can't accept defeat well. His only sign of agreement for them to visit Jötunheim _at long last_ is only a grunt. And then he storms out of the room, bringing his fussy little children with him. He locks himself and them in his quarters on the seventy-ninth floor, accepting delivery of foodstuffs – when those are brought _only_ by the bots Tony has for this sort of task.

And then Betty sends him a very, very long and detailed letter, pouring out her observations and feelings about Bruce, with her beau's semi-reluctant permission to share such with him. She even tags an, "I hope you'd consider talking with Bruce and me on our floor. Nobody else will be there, I swear, except for JARVIS – but he's always there, isn't he?" at the end.

He is too intrigued to reject the invitation outright, and too lonely with only his babies as company.

He caves in, at the end.


	34. Difficult

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Difficulties in procuring supplies means the dreaded, hated journey is postponed. Loki likes it.

34\. Difficult

Procuring Antarctic-level gear while unseen enemies and would-be capturers haunt one's steps wherever and whenever is like pulling a firmly lodged tooth from someone's jaw. Without the benefit of anesthetics. While subjecting the poor victim to electric stimulation just on this side of deathly and wacking their shins with gusto with a spiky mallet.

Tony's online purchases are usually tracked down and get tampered with despite the secure line that JARVIS guarantees while ordering those. More often than not, there are _also_ very, very undesirable stowaways in the delivery vans when the orders arrive.

Buying the supplies in person only serves to nearly get Natasha and Clint caught; but, well, at least the two former SHIELD employees manage to get this band of misfits each a set of clean, complete gear and its various accompaniments for replication and improvement.

Loki is highly amused with it all, and his housemates _very, very deliberately_ ignore it, for the sake of their sanity and his continuing health.


	35. Sprite

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Tony gets a bright, bright idea.

35\. Sprite

The team of misfits, which is slowly but surely enough turning into a strange but tight-knit family, discovers the baby-sitter for Loki's now one-year-old babies entirely by chance… or maybe it's fate, as Darcy cheerfully points out.

Tony was, after all, just idly combing through the final-project proposals of the civil engineering undergraduates at Stark University, while waiting for his fabricators to finish churning out the last batch of outfit and equipment they'll need, when he came upon a unique case…. Or rather, he came across a proposal _plus_ a petition for additional fund loan _and_ permission to bring a little brother along for familial reasons during the undertaking of the final project.

The peculiar proposal was written by a twenty-two-year-old orphan girl majoring in civil engineering and minoring in ancient architecture, one Sarah Anna Williams, who wanted to help unearth and restore a temple somewhere in Java. And she must be very good because even her project advisor _vowed_ that she is a responsible and trustworthy student, devoted to her college course, her work and her brother at the same time.

Other – saner, more likely, more responsible to their jobs – deans or rectors or whatever would've laughed the proposal away or scoffed at it. But Tony has never claimed himself as entirely sane and responsible anyway.

And he thinks that stowing Loki's little ones somewhere SHIELD might not guess at would be a very, very good idea.

With that in mind, the whole gang turns into a more benevalent version of the Spanish Inquisition and smuggles both Williams siblings into the tower.

They are met by a firebrand apparent-sixteen-year-old and an energetic apparent-two-year-old instead of the twenty-two-year-old and seven-year-old they've expected.

`_Oh well. It's a __**unique**__ case, right? These imps are adorable, anyway,_` Tony thinks. He might just keep them, even after this temporary job is concluded.


	36. Curfew

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: The first impression of Jötunheim and its people is… impressive.

36\. Curfew

Jötunheim is unexpectedly bright, if subdued and rather desolate, when most of the Avengers _finally_ get to step foot on it. On another note, the Antarctic-level cold-climate gear and supplies hold up surprisingly well, thankfully, although the level of comfort could do with some improvement.

The expedition team consists of only eleven intrepid and curious adventurers. Thor bowed out because he doesn't want to incite a new war with Jötunheim with his presence. Meanwhile, Pepper regretably has to oversee Stark Industries _while_ keeping an eye on both Loki's children and Peter Parker. The no-name man who used to be the Winter Soldier tagged along, though, because Steve insisted he come. And now, all eleven of them traverse the dim-golden-hued wasteland with caution, but also with naked interest and wonder.

There is a certain remote, rugged beauty there, not unlike a desert. In some places, it is even breath-taking.

Well, the native inhabitants, too, are breath-taking. Not only because of their size, but also grace _and_ speed, undiminished by the former.

And they act quite ferocious, as well, upon discovering trespassers on their land.

Who knows that it is _night_ there, and not even the natives are allowed to roam free during this time?

Worse, they then discover Loki.


	37. Exocism

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Sudden changes: They look like an exocism ceremony of the previous states, sometimes.

37\. Exorcism

The Avengers – whose members and definition and orders are now handpicked by themselves, instead of dictated by Fury or anybody else – are gently enough ushered by their captors into a rough-hewn, single-roomy stone hut.

The hut is, albeit large for the semi-unwilling guests, pretty small in comparison to its lone occupant. And the said lone occupant is a particularly huge, particularly dignified blue-skinned, red-eyed giant. A very muscular, very tough-and-strong-looking specimen who receives the rag-tag band of friends and comrades inside like a highborn host, unflappably polite and graceful even in the face of Loki's scorching, increasingly nonsensical vitriols.

And then it – he? She? They? – puts a pair of beyond-dustbin-lid-sized hands on Loki's head and back respectively.

He _changes_ before their eyes, so slowly that it looks as if he is being swallowed by a quicksand of blue skin tone and white markings.

The only warning that they receive _next_ is the giant's muttered "This is wrong," before the said giant then cradles the struggling Loki, and the latter _screams_.


	38. Detachable

Patchwork Road  
By Rey

Chapter summary: Steve learns a shocking lesson about family.

38\. Detachable

It should have been a proud moment, Steve thinks, that the Avengers act as one when they hear Loki shriek in such pain: trying to pry him free from the giant, trying to attack the giant, even trying to _bargain_ with the giant. All, in the hope that the giant will release the struggling, tormented form of their no-longer-enemy.

The only person who doesn't do any of the aforementioned deeds is Bucky. And even Bucky _flinches_, although Steve is sure that he has heard worse – _has done worse_ – while under HYDRA's control.

Not even _Natasha_ is absent from reacting, as she tries to shock the blue-skinned, red-eyed, white-marked giant with her wrist-mounted little shockers. And Steve knows that she prides herself on having an on-and-off switch to her emotions and _personalities_.

It seems, he reflects as he tries once more to pry the giant's arms free of Loki's much smaller form, that _family_ can do many things, including _un_detaching the detachable hearts of cold-blooded assassins.

If only the said family were not the price for such knowledge….


End file.
